Counterfactual story

In counterfactual history ( Latin : contra facta , “contrary to the facts”), also known as virtual history or Uchronie , historians use counterfactual conditional clauses to speculate in a controlled manner on the basis of the factual situation backed up by sources as to what would have happened if certain historical facts were not or would have happened otherwise. The aim is to gain knowledge about continuities and breaks, about predicaments and room for maneuver in historical situations or about the evaluation of their actors. Alternative scenarios are designed, as it were, in the unrealis of the past, whereby the following generally applies: The further back an event, the more hypothetical the statements about its effects become.

Related to this is the alternative world history of fiction , which, however, primarily satisfies entertainment needs.

Typical hypotheses

• What if Alexander the Great had n't died so early?
• How would history have been if Hannibal had won the Second Punic War against the Romans?
• What would have happened if Augustus had died young?
• What if Pontius Pilate had acquitted Jesus of Nazareth , who had been accused by the Jewish Sanhedrin ?
• What would have happened if Friedrich III. would not have died so early?
• How would history have been if the southern states had won the Civil War ?
• What would have happened if Otto von Bismarck had n't unified Germany in 1871?
• How would history have been if the 1914 attack in Sarajevo had n't taken place?
• What would the world look like today if Hitler had won World War II ?

Aspects

Science

Counterfactual history is rejected by many historians as unscientific because it only produces unfalsifiable speculations. Indeed, there are no conditions under which someone making a counterfactual statement is forced to admit that it is untrue. To use a specific example: the widespread thesis that the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 would have led to the capture of Moscow and a victory for the German Reich in World War II , if it had only started earlier in the year, cannot be proven either like its opposite - for obvious reasons, historical science is not an experimental science.

Use as an implicit argument in evaluations

Despite their strictly unscientific character, counterfactual statements nonetheless play a significant role in historical studies. Because virtual history is often implicitly decisive in the evaluations and weightings that emphatically scientifically working historians make. The plausible assumption, for example, that one of the causes of the French Revolution was the economic boom of the bourgeoisie , implies the counterfactual speculation that without this boom there would have been no revolution. Henry L. Stimson , Secretary of State at the time, made famous claims that the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. It also contains unprovable speculation about how the war would have ended without the bombs.

In general, every designation of a person or a fact as “great” or “significant” is based on the mostly unspoken consideration that without this person or fact the rest of the story would have been different.

In addition, a whole series of historical controversies revolve around counterfactual statements: The so-called "Borchardt controversy", which the Munich economic historian Knut Borchardt triggered in 1979 with the thesis that Chancellor Heinrich Brüning had no alternative at all to his crisis-worsening deflationary policy , is mainly unrealistic the past: could Brüning have pursued a different policy or not? The dispute over the role of Friedrich Ebert in the November Revolution also revolves around a counterfactual question: Could Ebert have been able to do without the cooperation with the monarchist elites, which later burdened the Weimar Republic , or would the left-wing radicals have plunged Germany into chaos?

Based on this insight, some historians even make their historical speculations explicit. These include Kai Brodersen , Robert Cowley and Alexander Demandt . In the field of economics, the economic historian and Nobel Prize winner Robert Fogel is a proponent of what is known as “counterfactual analysis”.

The thesis of the British historian Niall Ferguson , who showed a virtual alternative to the First World War in his book The False War, was provocative: If Great Britain had stayed out of it in 1914, the effect would have been a German victory - but at the same time a prosperous, democratic Europe without a second World War, because (according to Ferguson) there would have been no National Socialism in Germany , which he primarily considers to be an effect of the Versailles Treaty.

history class

Counterfactual speculations are also significant in history didactics . Since it is demotivating for students to only ever be confronted with questions and problems that have long been decided and solved, it has proven to be fruitful to present the historical situations as open to them. Then, regardless of how the actors actually acted, can be discussed controversially by the students, for example:

• As the students in place of the National Convention 1793 on King Louis XVI. would have judged.
• Whether it made sense for Germany to annex Alsace-Lorraine in 1871 .
• Or whether the Scheidemann government should have signed the Versailles Treaty in 1919, with its reparation obligations, which were considered unfulfillable .

Counterfactual speculations arise naturally in the discussion about which decision would have had which consequences.

literature

• Kai Brodersen (Ed.): Virtual antiquity. Turning Points in Ancient History. Darmstadt 2000, ISBN 3-896-782215 . (With several "case studies", from Alexander to Augustus to Constantine.)
• Alexander Demandt : It could have turned out differently. Turning points in German history. Propylaen-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-549-07368-1 .
• Alexander Demandt: Unhappened Story. A treatise on the question: What would have happened if ...? (= Small Vandenhoeck series. Volume 4022). 4th supplemented edition, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005 ( digitized version of the 2nd improved edition at Digi20: “Digitization of the DFG special collection areas”).
• Richard J. Evans : Changed Pasts. About counterfactual narration in history. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-421-04650-5 .
• Niall Ferguson (Ed.): Virtual History. Historical alternatives in the 20th century . Darmstadt 1999, ISBN 3-896-78201-0 .
• Sönke Neitzel: What if ...? Thoughts on counterfactual historiography. In: Historical Images. Festschrift for Michael Salewski on his 65th birthday. Edited by Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann, Jürgen Elvert, Birgit Aschmann and Jens Hohensee. Stuttgart 2003, pp. 312-324.
• Juliane Schiel: What would have happened if ...? The benefits of counterfactual historiography. In: Viator 41, 2010, pp. 211-231.

Web links

• "Alternative historiography is considered dubious" What if Hitler had won the war? Historian Juliane Schiel on counterfactual history, in: Basler Zeitung, issue of March 27, 2017; http://bazonline.ch/kultur/diverses/die-geschichte-hat-sich-noch-nie-wiederholt/story/18320309

Remarks

1. ↑ Alexander Demandt: Unhappened story. A treatise on the question: What would have happened if ...? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986, p. 54 f.